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Genealogy

Researching your ancestors may sometimes feel like you’re reading from the pages of a historical novel. Many times, it’s a mystery novel as well. If you want to know what illness killed your relative, the diagnosis might make no sense at all. Here’s a list of old-fashioned names for common illnesses that might have killed your ancestors.

When researching your family history, you may wonder what life was like for your ancestors.

They might have had some of the same work, family, health and financial problems that people have today. They also probably coped with many problems and decisions that don’t exist today or happen to a far lesser degree.

The staggering number of decisions most people have to make on a daily basis in today’s world has led to the concept of decision fatigue.…

Police in California believe that they’ve cracked a decades-old case involving multiple rapes and murders in the 1970s and early 1980s.

Finding their suspect involved more than just the modern ability to extract DNA from crime scene samples. Since the DNA didn’t match anyone in their law enforcement databases, police turned to a free online database of DNA called GEDMATCH.

On GEDMATCH, people researching their genealogy voluntarily post their ancestral DNA profiles to help in building their family trees.…

Google knows a lot about your ancestors if you know how to search for it. These 5 tips will help you get the most out of your Google genealogy research.

A word of caution, though – take care when you find other people’s family trees. It’s best to avoid copying information from other people’s genealogy unless they cite reliable sources. Otherwise, you have no way of verifying that the information is correct.…

Ancestry.com’s “hints” are one way the site tries to make genealogy research easy for beginners. While hints are often helpful, they’re also fraught with issues that can trick even experienced family historians.

How can you know how to handle Ancestry hints for the relatives in your family tree? Keep these 10 rules in mind before you accept them.

If you’re gathering together with relatives you don’t see very often, it might be a great opportunity to ask genealogy questions of your elderly relatives.

I’m not suggesting that you ambush someone and pepper him or her with questions nonstop for an hour. However, many people love to talk about themselves. If you politely request a few minutes to ask questions for your genealogy research, chances are pretty good that you’ll get a positive response.…